


holding my chin up

by annaslastdalliance



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: Ahistorical depictions of bathing, Anna being treated like a pet, Bathing, Caretaking, Completely unexplained AU, F/M, Gen, Handwriting porn, Hans being an exceptionally responsible owner, Mild emotional D/s, Picking clothes for your loved one, Sociopaths with emotional needs, The pet stuff is pretty mild but heads up anyway, This is basically the closest I'll ever get to fluff, This whole fic is basically an excuse for me to break out my favourite tropes, no kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-25
Updated: 2015-04-25
Packaged: 2018-03-25 18:47:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3820936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annaslastdalliance/pseuds/annaslastdalliance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hans and Anna have an arrangement. [Or, Hans looks after Anna, and Anna loves him for it.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	holding my chin up

**Author's Note:**

> I finished this thing a little while ago and so now am doing the obligatory cross-post from Tumblr. Vaguely inspired by Kimi Wa Petto, and my preoccupation with thinking about how well Hans takes care of the things he considers his. 
> 
> you can be my hero, by not letting me down  
> not letting me down again, and being around  
> you can be my hero, by crawling into the rut  
> crawling in the rut with me, and holding my chin up
> 
> –Malcolm Middleton, Fight Like the Night

This morning starts like all the others, with the thin, papery sound of Hans slitting open his letters in the other room. Anna lies on her back, blinking away sleep as she listens, lulled by the sound of his footsteps amidst the paper, pacing. Light is filtering into the room just above her nose, and after a moment she sits up into its ambit, yawning widely into the stillness. The room feels cold and fresh against her sleep-warmed skin.

Hans is where she expects him to be, where he always is: standing by the unlit fireplace, three envelopes held crisp between his white-gloved fingers. As usual, Anna pads over to the armchair nearest to him and settles into it in silence, dipping in and out of sleep as Hans finishes going through the morning post. It must be a quiet day, because it’s not long before she opens her eyes and finds Hans folding up the final piece of his correspondence, his eyes finding hers at last.

“Good morning.” He pauses on his way over to his writing desk to pull her in by the nape and place a quick kiss on her head. “Did you sleep well?”

Anna twists around onto her knees to face him, resting her chin on the top rail of the armchair. She must look like an idiot, but the thought is as much pleasing as embarrassing; Anna still not not tired of being openly clumsy and long-limbed around him, something she hasn’t been at will since she was first taught how to sit at a piano. Someone had always been tugging her hair back into braids; prodding at the centre of her back, gently. _Princess Anna, please go change your skirts before the guests arrive! Princess Anna, how did your face get so muddy?_

“You know I _always_ sleep well when I’m here.”

“Yes,” Hans concedes, mild but with a touch of impatience. “I know, and yet I asked you the question.”

Anna frowns down at the upholstery, slightly taken aback. Usually, Hans is more willing to indulge her in playfulness, no matter how busy—and three letters barely approaches his workload _some_ mornings.

“Hans, I slept _wonderfully_. I dreamt we were in a bakery, in Corona, and the whole place was decorated for Christmas. Which was _weird_ actually, because in the dream it was still spring.”

She waits for him to ask more, but he doesn’t, and eventually she clambers out of the armchair and pads over towards him, the floor cold underfoot. He’s still standing himself, hovering by his desk, as though struck with a sudden indecision about sitting at it, and as she comes closer, she sees he has a letter in his hands again, re-reading it.

There’s no point in asking. Instead, Anna sidles closer, getting on tiptoes to rest her chin on his shoulder. He sighs and turns over the letter in his hand, obscuring the text, and then leans his head lightly to the side against her brow.

“You wanted to hear me say it,” she guesses, and Hans spares her a glance, askance, but neither confirms nor denies it. They hang like that for a moment before she sees him decide, and he turns to face her fully and presses her against him, a single hand pressed firmly at the base of her back.

“Can we go out today?”

Anna’s voice is muffled against his jacket and he steers her back from him a little, holding her chin at an angle.

“Perhaps. Where would you like us to go?”

“Anywhere! It’s just such a beautiful day. Have you been outside yet? We could go to the gardens, or for a walk along the river, if you wanted. Oooh—we could even have a picnic—”

“Don’t get carried away, Anna.” Hans stokes a hand over her hair, almost absent-mindedly. He’s thinking of the letter again. “I have a meeting at lunch.”

“Can’t you just—cancel?” She knows she sounds hopeful, and Hans’s face crinkles with amusement, his eyes catching hers once more. “ _Please_ , it’s the first beautiful day we’ve had in weeks.”

“Unfortunately, Anna, I really can’t. Now, have you decided how you want to spend the morning yet?”

“I don’t mind, just as long as we can go outside…”

“Yes, that should be doable.” There’s that amusement in his voice again, but he pulls back from her fully to fold up the letter and place it on the writing desk, a sure sign it still isn’t far from his mind. “But first, let’s get you tidied up.”

“Oh…” Anna flutters a hand over hair, almost getting her fingers lodged in the tangle as she tries to comb it through hurriedly. “I didn’t think it was that bad this morning…”

“I’ve seen worse,” Hans says, after a moment. He leans back against the desk, arms folded behind him, appraising her. “Especially from you. Most mornings, you look as though a bird has built its nest on your head during the night.”

“Well, I like sleeping with it out, is all. It’s more comfortable!”

“I’m sure it is. But it does have its consequences.” Hans straightens up and steps closer, lifting a particularly matted strand of her hair for closer inspection. “Honestly, Anna, what did you _do_ last night, to get it into such a mess? Must I keep an eye on you _at night_ to keep you from tossing and turning this much?”

“Yes, please,” Anna says eagerly, and she’s glad she gets the words out despite her pink-tipped ears, because the look Hans gives her is suddenly very warm, and very present.

“I’ll see what I can do.” They stare at each other for a moment longer, Anna aware the pink is spreading down to her lobes and the top of her jaw, before Hans drops his hand and steps away, abruptly business-like again. “Alright, upstairs. If we’re to go out before lunch, you’ll have to be quick.”

Dutifully, Anna takes the stairs two at a time, even more energetic than usual at the prospect of a warm bath. Autumn has been surprisingly hot so far, to be sure, but Hans’s manor is large enough to be draughty, no matter the sunshine outdoors.

As usual, Hans makes her undress behind the partition as he fills the bathtub with water and rolls up his shirt sleeves. The filling takes quite a while, and before long, Anna’s skin has broken out into goosebumps, her arms wrapped around herself as she rocks back and forth to keep from shivering. When Hans finally calls her over, Anna almost trips in her desperation to climb in.

“Is it warm enough?”

“It’s perfect,” Anna tells him, with feeling, and sinks in all the way up to her chin, a sigh of contentment extracting itself from her chest. Hans smiles slightly, climbing off his knees to relocate onto the stool behind her, long legs bracketing either side of the tub.

He bathes her in silence at first, letting Anna hum to fill the quiet as he upends a bucket over her tangled hair and kneads soapy water through it. It’s only when he begins to drag the teeth of a comb across her scalp that Anna’s humming breaks off, her neck jerking back to follow each of his tugs. It’s an agonising process every time, Hans efficient rather than gentle, and before long Anna’s head is tilted back as far as it can go, tears of pain sparking beneath her squeezed-shut eyelids. At length, Hans sets the comb aside and she blinks her eyes open again to see him skate a light-fingered hand down the exposed arch of her neck, still slippery with soap.

“What?”

“You were making a thin noise. Were you aware of it?”

“…no.”

“I didn’t think so. Maybe it’s time you had a haircut.” Hans pauses for a moment, and Anna tilts her head very slightly to the side, to catch him in profile, hovered over her shoulder. Undeterred by her scrutiny, he draws a thumb and a finger together across her skin, just under her throat, almost a pinch but for its gentleness. “Or I really _will_ have to keep an eye on you every night.”

“W-well—you already know my preference in that.”

“I do,” he says, a slight upturn in the corner of his mouth, “but your preference isn’t very practical, Anna. You know perfectly well that I can’t sleep with you every night, so it’ll have to be a haircut.”

Before Anna can decide whether or not to protest, a left-over tear streaks unexpectedly down her cheek, and Hans moves his hand up to catch it on his thumb. Her throat suddenly sticks and unsticks, caught between the remnants of pain and the sleepy bliss of all her other sensations.

“Now?”

He seems to consider it. “It can wait. For _now_ …”

Without warning, the bucket’s upturned over her head again, and Anna barely manages to close her eyes in time to keep the suds out. As usual, Hans follows this up by placing two ungloved hands on her shoulders, and pushing her sharply down into the water, submerging her completely twice in quick succession.

“Up.”

Anna stands, eyes still closed and swaying, and Hans wraps a towel around her at chest-height, using the corner to dab the water from her eyelids as he does. Anna opens her eyes and blinks down at his wrists, her mouth parting slightly.

“What?”

“Your cuffs are soaking.”

Hans lifts his hands briefly from her shoulders to check, and Anna watches with her brow furrowing.

“Tch—so they are. I’ll have to change. Get dressed; I won’t be long.”

Left alone, Anna steps out of the bathtub and makes her way dripping over to the wardrobe. The array is dizzying: skirts, shirts, and dresses fan out in every colour; above them, shawls and scarves descend from rails like Maypole ribbons. They’re all beautiful, and Anna leans out instinctively to skim her hand across the different fabrics: velvet, lace, silk—sometimes even a pairing of all three. It’s strangely overwhelming, and she closes her eyes against it, briefly.

Truth be told, Anna doesn’t really _like_ picking out her clothes; hasn’t ever since she was a child, and likes it even less now. Back in Arendelle, she’d left the task to her attendant whenever possible, preferring to select only the colour, all too aware of the complex etiquette she would doubtless violate if she attempted the choice herself. With Hans, the spectre of etiquette has gone, but for all that she finds the clothes beautiful, the task is no more enjoyable. If anything, the dizzying choice only makes it more difficult: once, when she’d been younger, Anna had been allowed to dress herself for the evening ball, and she had come down with four dresses on at once and a different shoe on each foot.

“Anna?”

Anna’s eyes fly open, and she reaches up to steady the towel around herself again. Hans has taken the opportunity to pull on his riding boots while replacing his shirt, and his footsteps make a pleasing sound on the stone underneath as he comes towards her.

“Really, this is ridiculous. You are going to have to get better at this. Move, please.”

Obediently, she shuffles aside, and watches Hans peruse the array with a quicker eye.

“There,” he says at length, laying his selection carefully on the bed. “Can I trust you to get dressed alone? I’d like some coffee before we go.”

Anna blushes to the collarbone. “O-of course I can get _dressed_ by myself…”

“You’ll forgive me if it seemed far from a sure thing,” Hans counters, sounding more irritated than amused now, and traipses back down the stairs ahead of her.

By the time Anna makes it down, Hans has finished with his coffee and is sitting cross-legged on the divan, the morning paper resting across his knees. He gets up when she reaches the landing, and steps closer to look her over. He’d set aside a mauve outfit for her today, not something she would have chosen for herself if she’d had to, but she’d found herself strangely pleased with it nonetheless, as she always tends to. Hans, it seems, feels much the same, and Anna finds herself wondering, not for the first time, how much their pleasure is simply a reflection of the other’s.

“Now I believe you mentioned something about a walk by the river…”

“Yes! Oh, this is going to be great; maybe they’ll even be racing boats again…” Anna’s excitement dampens slightly. “But no picnic, I’m guessing.”

“Don’t pout, Anna, I don’t have the time for it this morning.” He kisses her forehead once, perfunctorily. “Are you quite ready?”

As it turns out, they are not racing boats again, but Anna’s dismay doesn’t last long. It’s been weeks since she’s been outside—their arrangement not lending itself much to Anna freely wandering—and the fresh air and sunlight makes her feel giddy. True to late autumn, a light breeze is blowing, but it’s brisk rather than cold, and the shawl Hans has chosen is more than sufficient to keep her warm. 

“It really is a _beautiful_ day.”

They’ve been strolling along the water for coming on ten minutes before Anna reaches for his hand, half instinctive, half deliberate. Hans doesn’t draw away immediately, and for a moment Anna thinks he won’t at all, but then he squeezes her fingers once and lets go. Anna stops abruptly, mid-stride, and Hans stops in turn to look at her expectantly.

“No one’s going to _see,_ Hans…”

“No,” Hans says, not unkindly but quite firmly, and Anna lets out a resentful puff of air.

“Then can we at least _sit down_ somewhere? Do you have the time for _that_?”

Hans’s expression takes on an edge of genuine asperity. “Very _well_ , Anna, if it will stop you asking. But I’ll hold you to account if I’m late for my meeting.”

Without waiting for her answer, Hans cuts off the path in front of her, leading them away from the riverside and over to the base of an old willow. It’s quieter here, with most of the passersby taking their walk closer to the water, and Anna drops down immediately amongst the cradle of its roots, enjoying the coldness of the soil against her shins. Hans, meanwhile, carefully removes his jacket and pats at the grass for signs of damp before stretching himself out against the trunk instead, his gaze distant. Anna looks at him quickly and then away, prodding at the loose soil beneath them.

“It was a good idea of yours to come out,” Hans muses once the silence settles, a hint of exhaustion creeping into his voice for the first time this morning. “I imagine this is the last day of this sort we’ll get this season. Of course, the promenade has its charms even when it gets colder. I’ll have to show you. The river doesn’t freeze, of course, but a lake forms a little further on, and people skate on it throughout winter.”

He pauses then, as though waiting for a response, and Anna makes a sound as noncommittal as possible, listening to it vibrate through her cheeks and her nose. For the barest of moments, she can feel Hans’s eyes on her; then she feels his fingers as well, cupping her chin carefully as though shielding a candle from the wind.

“You’re upset,” he guesses mildly, angling her face towards his. When she doesn’t answer immediately, he uncurls his fingers to dab lightly at the tip of her nose, her cheekbones, her chin. “Have _I_ upset you?”

Anna doesn’t look around, her gaze fixed on the mound of earth beneath them where she has dug her fingers in. At length, she hears Hans sigh, and out of the corner of her eye, sees him shift to face her properly.

“Anna, you disappoint me.”

This time his voice has changed in quality: not sharper, but _flatter_ , harder to ignore by virtue of its emptiness. Despite herself, Anna splutters.

“You’re—you’re disappointed in _me_?”

“Yes, I am,” he says, curtly, and she meets his eyes again to find them no longer unseeing. “I asked one thing of you, Anna—one only—when you first came to me. Do you remember it?”

“No…” She’s lying, and she knows Hans can hear it.

“You don’t? Then let me refresh your memory. I asked you to tell me if you were ever upset, if you felt that I needed to hear it. In fact, I asked you to keep me apprised of your emotions in general, so that I might in turn consider them. Do you remember that?”

This time, Anna lies only by omission, and Hans unpicks a leaf from her hair without breaking her gaze.

“I’ll take that as a yes, then. With that, allow me to repeat my question. _Have I upset you_?”

“A—Alright, then, _yes_ , you _have_.”

She expects him to be amused by her sudden outburst, but the brief quirk of his mouth is triumphant rather than mocking.

“ _Good_ ,” he says, softly, his grip forcing their eyes into alignment again. “And _how_ have I upset you?”

Anna swallows dryly, trying to hang onto her resentment. It’s funny, really, when others might call his tone condescending. But how can she feel talked down to, when their association is so strictly voluntary, and Hans so ruthless in discarding that in which he finds no value? He can be cruel, yes, but his cruelty is honest; and whenever he holds her chin and tells her _good,_ she can believe it. Unlike others, there is no shred of flattery in him—not anymore. Now, he will not tell her _good_ unless _good_ is exactly what he means.

“I wasn’t—I don’t _want_ you to be late for your stupid meeting. But now I feel like if you _are_ , it’ll be my fault.”

“And you consider that unfair?”

“It _is_ unfair,” Anna asserts, hotly. “If you didn’t have time to stop, then you shouldn’t have let me. I’m not…” She breaks off, throat tightening again despite everything. “It wasn’t _up_ to me.”

Thoughtfully, Hans slips his hand around to the side of her neck, stroking lightly at the top of her nape.

“You’re quite right, Anna. I apologize. You’re getting _entirely_ too persuasive.” He pauses, considering. “What if I asked you to timekeep for me? Would that help with the feeling?”

“Not really,” Anna admits, suddenly small-voiced again. “I, um—I get pretty distracted.”

“Yes, I’ve noticed. Nevermind, then; I’ll take care of it. Unlike you, I don’t.”

It’s true, and it makes the lingering flume of unhappiness inside her surge unexpectedly. Anna looks away from him, down at the ground; inspecting the pattern of roots that undulate over the packed earth with sudden attentiveness. When she glances up again, Hans is still watching her, carefully, and Anna does not so much blush as wilt beneath the scrutiny.

“You’re still upset. Why?”

When she doesn’t answer, Hans draws her head down to his lap, and Anna twists her face into the fabric of his shirt and inhales, soothed despite herself by the familiar smell of his linen and the faint heat of his body beneath it.

“It’s just—it’s just that I wanted to be _helpful_.”

“The day isn’t over yet, Anna. Maybe this afternoon I’ll get you to launder my shirts for me.” He smiles fleetingly at her expression. “No? You did ruin my cuffs.”

“If I do…can we go for a picnic tomorrow?”

Hans’s expression turns unusually severe.

“Oh, are we _bargaining_ now? And here I thought you wanted to be helpful.” For a moment, Anna flounders, but mercifully, Hans does not keep a straight face for long. “Don’t look so worried, Anna. I wouldn’t _let_ you launder my shirts if you begged me; you’d almost certainly ruin them.”

This is probably true, and Anna bites her lip to keep from denying it. It’s surprisingly difficult: normally, she wouldn’t care one jot about her skills at laundry, or cooking, or any of the other chores that Hans has taken from her hands and into his—but today, it somehow seems like an unforgivable failing. The feeling reminds her of earlier that morning, Hans’s irritation when she’d failed to dress herself without him, and she almost gives in, then—almost blurts _I wouldn’t!_ But if she is useless, Anna is determined not to make herself worse by lying.

Above her, Hans is quiet, the corner of his mouth quirking lightly as he tracks her struggle. When the silence settles, he strokes her hair once, slowly, with the back of his knuckles.

“Good,” he says again, softly, almost to himself. “ _Good_.”  

It warms her to the core, the way it usually does, but unlike usual, Anna surfaces from the feeling with her brow furrowed, somehow disquieted. It is not like Hans, to parcel out praise so easily.

“Hans?”

Content that she has settled, his attention has shifted, and he doesn’t look at her when he answers.

“Yes?”

“What was that letter, this morning?”

As expected, Hans doesn’t answer, so Anna burrows her head closer until she can feel the outline of his ribs, and he sighs and curls a hand into her hair. From this angle, Hans is all nose and eyelashes, sharpness and distance.

“It was from one of my brothers.”

His voice is perfectly, carefully neutral.

“Oh? Which one?”

Anna waits for a moment in case he answers before she squirms onto her side, slipping an arm across his legs to prop up the side of her head on her hand. Hans eyes her as she shifts, gone from distant to wary, and she drags a finger down her nose, watching his eyes track the gesture.

“The one with the…?”

“No, it wasn’t Karl,” Hans says, his voice coloured now with irritation.

“Alright, then maybe the one with…” She tries to gesture at her ears, slips and collapses back into his lap with a muffled gasp, elbowing him in the side.

“For heaven’s sake, Anna,” Hans’s voice says above her, shifting, but there’s no real heat to it anymore. “What does it matter?”

“I’m just trying to get a good picture in my head,” Anna explains, rolling onto her back again. “So I’ll know who to hit, if I ever see him…”

“Now _there’s_ a good picture for _my_ head. You would have a fight on your hands, though. Leo is practically twice your size.”

“I think _that’s_ an exaggeration,” Anna tells him, sternly. “Will you let me read it?”

The fingers in her hair go still. “Why?”

“I’m not like you, _Hans_ , there’s no _ulterior motive._ I just want to read it.”

After a moment, he lifts his hand from her collar and reaches into his jacket pocket, removing a folded piece of paper. Anna frowns, worrying at her bottom lip. She hadn’t noticed him picking it up from the writing desk when they’d left.

“Can I…?”

“If the need is truly pressing,” Hans cedes, irritably, letting her take the letter from him and unfold it.

Anna lifts it above her face, squinting at the cursive backlit by the sun. It does indeed appear to be from Hans’s brother, though Anna struggles to read the signature at the bottom, with its wide, loopy lettering. Happily, however, not all the letter is so indecipherable, with another, smaller hand dominating at the margins of the paper. Anna shifts her focus, trying to picture this second author—another brother? Hans’s mother?—and wonders if this person, whoever they are, could be the cause of Hans’s distress. Then she begins to read it, and recognizes Hans’s defensive formality instantly: _your kindness and consideration…as soon as you deem suitable…thank you for the forethought_. No second author, then; merely Hans, drafting the beginnings of his response as annotation. Anna stares at it, forgetting everything else.

“Well?” Hans snaps above her. “Are you quite finished?”

She doesn’t bother to look up. “Hans, your handwriting’s beautiful.”

“What?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen it before.” Anna brings it closer to her face, wrinkling her face at the transparency. “Where did you learn to draw an _I_ like that?”

“My tutor,” Hans says, still sounding slightly startled. After a moment he adds, more composed: “I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me you’re impressed; your own hand is ap _palling_.”

“My _scrawl_ , you mean,” Anna corrects, and meets his eyes to find him smiling.

“Yes, that is a better word for it.”

“It was _never_ good, either,” she remembers aloud, a little mournfully. “Gerda used to say it _could_ be good…if I would just stop fidgeting. But yours…yours is so _elegant_. Like you’ve got all the time in the world.”

Hans is looking at her strangely. “Perhaps I’ll write to you, if you’re so taken with it.”

“I’d like that,” Anna tells him, and a coyness creeps into her voice unbidden.

For a moment, neither of them speaks. Hans brings a hand down towards her, and Anna thinks he is going to take the letter back, but he simply closes his fingers gently around her wrist, just above the bone. He is still watching her closely, with no touch of vacancy to his expression this time; his eyes full and wide, his forehead slack, lips slightly parted.

“What shall I write you?”

“The words wouldn’t matter.” Anna exhales carefully, resisting the urge to sit up, to lean into him. “It could be anything—a page from one of your most _boring_ ledgers—as long as you wrote it.”

“So you could see my handwriting.”

“Maybe I could try to match it,” Anna suggests, breaking off for a second when Hans touches lightly at her cheek. “I could—I could copy it out again, whatever it was, and try to mimic the shape of your letters.”

“That sounds like quite the exercise.” Her eyes are drawn to his Adam’s apple as he swallows. “Almost a shame not to be around to see it.”

“And then—then I could send it back to you, so you could see. How well I’d done. I mean, _if_ I’d done well, that is. You could—you could even grade it, if you liked.”

“If _I_ liked?” Hans echoes, and he’s smiling at her, knowingly. “Don’t you mean, if _you_ liked?”

“I—” Anna blushes to her roots again, her breath hitching when Hans slides a hand down her side, to rest at the juncture of her hip. “I _do_ like.”

“I know,” Hans tells her, and he leans forward slightly, over her, blocking out the remaining sky. “And what _I_ would like is to watch you, scratching out some dreary tract for me, over and over, chewing on your bottom lip as you concentrate—yes, like that,” he adds, eyes darting down to her mouth, and Anna laughs lightly, giddy. “Shall we do that?”

“Yes. Yes, I—yes.”

“Good,” he says, softly, for the third time today, and Anna has to shut her eyes tightly as though shielding herself from sunlight. “And then, once you’ve written it— _properly_ written it, so that the words look like words, and not like chicken scratchings— _then_ , if it passes muster, you’ll send it to me in turn, and come out from your bedroom the next morning to find me reading it at my letter desk.”

Anna parts her lips, but doesn’t open her eyes. “I—I’d like that.”

Hans stokes his thumb down the bone of her hip.

“I thought you would. It will be quite the love letter, I think.”

The meaning of his words reaches her slowly, as though through water. Anna feels drowsy yet somehow painfully alert, captivated by the quiet susurration of Hans’s breathing and the exact pressure of his fingertips. But if Anna is lost right now, then so is he, and they find each other at the point of overlap in their illusions—their double act of being wanted, and wanting.

Anna opens her eyes.

“Sounds like it could take a while.”

His eyes meet hers, crinkling. “Given the way you write at present, I don’t doubt it.”

“Then we should probably get started on it soon, shouldn’t we?” Anna shimmies up onto her elbows, almost colliding with Hans’s chin in the process. “Like—maybe immediately?”

“Is that what you think?” Hans leans back fully, a precautionary measure, and watches her as she scrambles back up to sitting. “And yet I seem to remember something about not wanting to make me miss my ‘stupid meeting’?”

“Oh, _that_.” She picks a leaf from her dress while Hans climbs to his feet opposite, brushing himself down in turn. “You can just postpone that, can’t you?”

The letter from earlier, the one that had started it, has caught in Hans’s jacket as he’d risen, and Anna watches as it floats gently down to earth again now, landing in the sudden space between their bodies. Hans’s eyes flicker down to it, for just a moment, as he reaches down to help her up.

“I’ll see what I can do,” he says, another echo from earlier, and Anna takes his hand.


End file.
